The Banner Saga looked really appealing to me because it features both beautiful artwork reminiscent of old fantasy cartoons I watched as a kid and stuff like Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. You don’t really see art like this anymore which is a real shame. In addition to looking fantastic it also features turn-based strategy gameplay. Anybody who may be familiar with stuff I’ve written in the past might recall that I’ve often been a big fan of turn-based strategy games and SRPGs. The one thing I was absolutely NOT expecting was for the game, between battles that is, to play out similar to Oregon Trail. I’m not sure if anybody else has made that comparison yet since I haven’t actually read anything on the game. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the Oregon Trail, though. Most people seem to love that game and have fond memories, including myself. I’m not saying that the similarities between the games is a bad thing at all, merely that it completely surprised me.

Go West, Giant Horned Man

So basically throughout the game you switch perspectives between several main characters. When you aren’t in combat, which I’ll touch on later, you are marching across the land with a huge caravan of people. Your caravan can be made up of a number of clansmen, fighters, and Varl which are giant horned humanoids. You also have a certain number of supplies which will feed your caravan for a set number of days. If you run out of food then people start dying. Your caravan morale will decrease if you encounter any bad situations or if you are marching for too many days without taking a break. As far as I can tell the only effect morale has is in combat and it determines how much bonus or negative morale points you get. (more…)